Book excerpt: Addressing the apparent tensions between modernity and sustainability in Southeast Asia, this book offers novel insights into the global challenge of moving towards a low-carbon energy system. With an original and accessible take on social theory related to energy transitions, modernity and sustainability, Mattijs Smits argues for a reinvigorated geography of energy. He also challenges universalistic and linear assumptions about energy transitions and makes the case for ‘energy trajectories’, stressing embeddedness, contingency and connections between scales.